Why terminations on speaker cable?

Until I started playing in the high end audio sandbox eight years ago, I have never used anything other than bare speaker wire (stranded). That's about 30 years of using stranded bare wire without any issues or problems.

Makes a difference. I've been using DIY copper foil speaker cables & jumpers with 1/4" punched holes. This works nicely with Cardas no-stress clamp-style binding posts. With Merlin VSM this has eliminated ten solder joints and ten spades per speaker.

I like bare wire connections, BUT one must be careful. Multi stranded heavy gauge wire requires some torque when tightening down the nuts. It needs more compression than is readily apparent. What appears tight can be loose the next day and fairly easily disconnected resulting in a potential for a short. I routinely check the connections at the speakers or amps. The only down side is you can't simply disconnect the wires if you are having an electrical/component emergency. A rare occurrence, but......

The only reason to have "terminated" wire is to facilitate frequent disconnection/reconnection. Like if you run an audio shop. For most home aplications there are better ways to spend money.

Newbee - stranded wires should not be tinned (unless done in factory). There are two reasons for that:

- Tinned stranded wires break easily, because stress point on the border of isolation is created (solder stiffens wire but stops short of going inside). It is just against common thought that tinning makes wire stronger.

- Connection is not reliable because solder "gives" over time (it is called cold flow). In some states (for instance Missouri) it is illegal (against code) to tin stranded wires.

This is clearly stated in BSEN 60950-1:2006 Information Technology equipment - Safety, Para. 3.3.8.

"3.3.8 Stranded Wire
The end of a stranded conductor shall not be consolidated by soft-soldering at places where the conductor is subject to contact pressure unless the method of clamping is designed so as to reduce the likelhood of a bad contact due to cold flow of the solder.
Spring terminals that compensate for the cold flow are deemed to satisfy this requirement.
Preventing the clamping screws from rotating is not considered to be adequate."


Stranded wire, flattened provides under pressure oxygen free connection while flattening increases contact area.

That's minor point and people do what worked for them before, but I absolutely agree with you that one has to be careful and examine connection from time to time.